Tom Minnery

Yesterday, Tom Minnery and Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family's CitizenLink were discussing the need for conservative Christians to vote in the upcoming election, with Minnery saying that it was important so that Republicans can control both the House and the Senate and then pass right-wing legislation that President Obama will then veto, which will help the Republicans in the 2016 presidential election.

"It's always important to highlight the difference between conservatives and liberals," Minnery said. "The issue of marriage, the issue of sanctity of human life, the issue of religious liberty more and more, are issues that highlight the differences."

If Republicans take control of Congress, Minnery hopes that they will then pass various pieces of anti-abortion legislation that Obama will inevitably veto, which will help Republican candidates who will be running for president in the next election.

"Highlighting it during these next two years will be a good thing," Minnery said, as Shepard reminded viewers that "it's always important to keep an eye on the long term, on the big picture ... because it's the long term movement we're looking for":

Tom Minnery of CitizenLink says that Religious Right groups are urging people not to vote for Republican candidates who support marriage equality to send the GOP a message that "social conservatives are people who will not be taken for granted."

Rush Limbaugh and Chuck Norris think that Eric Holder resigned in order to position himself for a Supreme Court nomination.

The Foundation for Moral Law, started by Roy Moore, is joining the right-wing campaign to demand that Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg recuse themselves from any case involving marriage equality.

Republican congressional candidate Zach Dasher stands by his statement that atheism was partially responsible for the Sandy Hook massacre: "These children that were killed in Connecticut were made for a purpose and to be honest with you even the killer himself was made for a purpose he was made in the image of God. But somewhere along the way he believed what the atheist says. He reduced humanity to nothing more than a collection of atoms to be discarded like an old banana peel.”

Finally, "Coach" Dave Daubenmire is furious about efforts to "effeminize football" and "effeminize manhood" by harping on the Ray Rice domestic violence scandal:

Cindy Jacobs has issued an "Urgent Prophetic Warning" that is conveniently vague enough so that if anything does happen, she
can claim to have prophesied it. Of course, if nothing happens, she can then just claim that her prayers prevented it.

FRC prays against Obamacare once again: "Heavenly Father, we appeal to you,
Judge of the Universe. We know that your Eternal Law commands, "Thou shalt not kill." Please guide the thinking of
our Supreme Court Justices. Move them to do right and to reaffirm the religious liberty guaranteed by our Constitution. Stir
Churches across America to join this appeal! May your will be done!"

Lots of Religious
Right infighting today, as Bryan Fischer goes after Russell
Moore while both Alan Keyes and Michael Brown attack Focus on the
Family's Tom Minnery.

The military has turned against Christians because "people in the White House [have] taken an anti-religious but particularly an anti-
Christian viewpoint."

Finally, Jennifer LeClaire has a warning for Jon Stewart: "Propagating lies in the name of humor or an antichrist agenda is a sad way to be remembered in eternity."

As we’ve been reporting, the American Religious Right has found itself in a tough spot following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, since many Religious Right leaders have not only praised Putin’s anti-gay, anti-choice policies but are planning to attend a World Congress of Families summit at the Kremlin later this year.

Now, one such group that previously praised Putin has announced that it will pull out of the Moscow summit. Buzzfeed reported yesterday that Concerned Women for America will no longer be participating in the World Congress of Families event because, as the group’s CEO Penny Nance said, “I don’t want to appear to be giving aid and comfort to Vladimir Putin.”

Now the question becomes whether other American groups will follow Nance’s lead. An organizing meeting for the event in October included Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage, Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, Benjamin Bull of Alliance Defending Freedom, Justin Murff of the Christian Broadcasting Network and Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute.

A draft program for the event that was obtained by Buzzfeed includes speeches by ADF president Allan Sears, Focus president Jim Daly, Mike Farris of the Home School Legal Defense Association, Brown, Ruse and Murff, among others.

In addition, the World Congress of Families receives funding from “partner organizations” including the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, and Americans United for Life.

The World Congress of Families’ Larry Jacobs said at last month’s press conference that members of the U.S. Congress would also attend the event, though he would not specify which ones since he said their confirmations were not yet finalized. The draft program also accounts for speeches from unidentified members of Congress. to speak.

Ruse articulated the apparent attitude of many American groups when he told Buzzfeed that although the Ukraine invasion “muddied the water,” he had not been concerned about working so closely with the Putin regime until now, “because the Russian government has been quite good on our issues.”

Nance is aware of the message that her group’s participation in the summit would send. Will anybody else follow her lead?

Last week, we reported that National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown had just gotten back from a Moscow planning meeting for the 2014 World Congress of Families gathering in Russia. Brown confirmed his participation to Rachel Maddow, telling her “we are proud to work with our allies in Russia and around the world to protect marriage as the union as one man and one woman.”

We now have a clearer idea of who those allies are. In a press release yesterday, the World Congress listed many of the participants in last week’s planning meeting. They included leaders of several major American religious right groups including Brown, Benjamin Bull of the Alliance Defending Freedom, Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, Justin Murff of the Christian Broadcasting Network, and Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM).

Also on the list is Fabrice Sorlin, the far-right French activist who led a delegation joined by Brown to testify before the Russian parliament in May in favor of a broad ban on the adoption of Russian orphans by gay couples and single people living in countries that allow same-sex marriage. Sorlin is the one who told members of the Duma that Russia’s efforts to repel advances in gay rights (or “the suicide of our civilization”) was just like its role protecting Europe from the “the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan” in the 13th century.

According to the World Congress’ press release, these activists not only discussed topics for the upcoming summit (including “declining fertility and the origins of the sexual revolution, the ideological roots of the anti-family lobby, the protection and promotion of marriage [and] countering the radical sexual rights agenda”) but also met with Russian legislator Yelena Mizulina to discuss a “WCF parliamentary forum” for September 2014.

Mizulina is the head of the Duma’s committee for family, women and children and coauthor of Russia’s new ban on speech in favor of gay rights to minors. The World Congress has been one of the most vocal international defenders of that law. The fact that the World Congress and its members are working directly with her to plan an exchange with members of the Russian parliament shows that the summit’s location in Moscow isn’t just an accident of geography.

In fact, as we have reported, WCF has built up a structure of activists in Russia to push anti-gay, anti-choice policies throughout Eastern Europe in the year’s leading up to the 2014 summit, and it was “activists working with the World Congress of Families” who invited Brown to speak to the Duma in favor of the adoption ban.

WCF’s managing director went so far as to say, shortly before Russia’s parliament passed the “gay propaganda” bill, that “the Russians might be the Christian saviors of the world.” As Political Research Associates has noted, the very idea for the World Congress of Families came from a meeting of the group's founder with Russian Orthodox activists, so the upcoming events in Moscow are something of a homecoming for the group.

Finally, Kelly Boggs warns that "the push to have homosexuality accepted as natural, normal and healthy in the United States knows no compromise. The movement to have homosexuality celebrated in America will not stop, nor will it be satisfied, until all voices that would even whisper it is sinful are squelched."

Tom Minnery , head of Focus on the Family’s political arm CitizenLink, criticized Gov. Chris Christie for signing a bill barring the practice of ex-gay therapy on minors. He told Stuart Shepard that ex-gay therapy is “common and there is a history of them working well, many people have lost their confusion about sexuality as a result of them to the good.”

Minnery also feared the society is making kids think they are gay when they are not, increasing the need for the discredited pseudo-scientific practice: “As society prides itself on putting homosexuality on a pedestal you can see how more and more young people might think they are gay, might think they are lesbian, but what they are probably is just confused and need precisely the kind of help that the governor by signing this law says they cannot have and that’s a tragedy.”

Later, Shepard wondered if Christie, who said he didn’t consider homosexuality to be a sin, urged reporters to ask him “if immorality is okay, are you okay with adultery? Is that what you’re saying, what sins and which ones are out, Gov. Christie?” “Someone ought to ask that question of his wife, what about adultery,” Minnery added.

Tom Minnery says this nation may soon see a religious revial, in part because "religion makes people healthier" and so "given that health care costs are rising chronically, it may be that discounts on health insurance may be offered for those who attend church regularly or who otherwise demonstrate their religious participation."

Bryan Fischer continues to speculate that the military blocked the Southern Baptist Convention's website out of some sort of hostility toward Christians despite the fact that even the SBC says that was not the case.

Peter LaBarbera is not happy with news that the LDS church supports a proposal to drop the ban on gay Boy Scouts: "Look, this is a church which is outside of Christendom. Mormons can change their core beliefs and call it a divine transformation. They did it with polygamy; they did it with racism – and now I'm afraid, I'm very afraid, that they're going to do it with homosexuality.”

Finally, the AFA's Ed Vitagliano is also a little worked-up over the prospect that the Boy Scouts may soon allow gay scouts: "For the tolerance gurus there is a secular morality that is just as absolute as that preached by any Bible-thumper behind a pulpit. It is a pagan sexual ethic rooted in moral relativism with the taproot deeply embedded in Darwinian evolution. Its teachers have their own unbending laws cut into stone and pronounced from on high. Their prophets hurl jeremiads at the unrepentant, who are relegated to a this-worldly hell consisting of the drying up of corporate funding, the disdain and downright persecution of the civil state, banishment to the fringes on university campuses, and the sneering mockery of Hollywood. For these pioneers of the brave new world, people who practice sodomy are the saints and Christians are the sinners. And humanist stormtroopers have spent the last 60 years hunting down and driving out the infidels."

A number of top Religious Right figures over the last few years have been trying to rally support among conservatives for comprehensive immigration reform, arguing that Hispanics are potential allies in their anti-choice and anti-gay advocacy work while warning that if the Right continues to alienate and demonize Latino voters then they will be writing their own political death sentence. As a result, it wasn’t a surprise to see Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention and Sam Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference enthusiastically applaud the Obama administration decision to stop deporting undocumented immigrations who are under the age of 30 and arrived in the U.S. before they were 16 years old, and Republican activist Adryana Boyne endorsed the move at the stage of the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s national summit on Saturday.

However, not all social conservatives are on board.

Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, who earlier this month signed onto the pro-reform Evangelical Immigration Table, called the announcement partisan and divisive. Minnery even suggested that the decision to stop deporting some young migrants is bad for families because they won’t be deported with their parents:

Tom Minnery, Focus on the Family’s senior vice president for government and public policy, said he was disappointed with the president’s actions.

“A quick fix in a contentious issue seems designed only for partisan advantage and will divide the country even further,” he said.

Minnery noted that the action will serve to break up families by targeting parents for deportation, while leaving young people behind to fend for themselves.

“Teenagers just out of high school, without intact families, are more likely to wind up dependent on the government,” he said. “This is no solution at all.”

American Family Association’s Buster Wilson attacked the decision by revisiting a debunked conspiracy theory that the Department of Homeland Security thinks that people “who believe in pro-life issues and the second coming of Jesus should be watched as potential terrorists vote,” and then went on to wonder whether Obama is going to allow the young people impacted by the decision to vote, even though they won’t be granted citizenship:

It’s so interesting to me that these people who are, whether they were brought here as children by fault of their known or not, they are still in the process of violating US immigration law. Janet Napolitano will work with her president to do whatever she can to honor those folks while first thing she did in this position, right out of the shoot back in 2009, was issue a white paper to all law enforcement saying that people like you and me who believe in pro-life issues and the second coming of Jesus should be watched as potential terrorists. Incredible; I continue to ask every day now what country am I living in? It is not the America I grew up in.

…

Another thing that was suggested by some, and I have tried to be fair about this and to try to ascertain how this could happen. I don’t know what the process would be to make this happen, but some have suggested that 800,000 young but old enough to get work permit illegals that the president is throwing out the welcome mat to, giving them basically a soft, backdoor amnesty, could this be his way in an election year, in just months before the election, of adding 800,000 plus votes to his side of the ledger in November? Good question to ask.

This weekend Tom Minnery, the head of Focus on the Family’s political arm CitizenLink, announced that the group will be withdrawing a so-called “Religious Freedom Amendment” from consideration in the upcoming election, citing what he deemed cumbersome rules on petitions. Zack Ford of Think Progress points out that the amendment effectively would give certain groups or individuals “veto power over all policy decisions,” as pharmacists could cite “a sincerely held religious belief” not to fill prescriptions like birth control, teachers could refuse to teach evolution, and employers could have free rein to discriminate against LGBT employees.

The Denver Post reports that Minnery is considering “another attempt at a ballot measure in the 2014 election cycle or look at a legislative push next year”:

Focus on the Family senior vice president Tom Minnery said Friday the conservative Christian advocacy group soon will withdraw its ballot initiative for a constitutional amendment prohibiting state interference with the religious freedom of a person or organization.

The draft language of the ballot measure said government may not directly or indirectly burden a person or organization by withholding benefits, assessing penalties or excluding a person or group from government programs or facilities.

"There's a tangled thicket of regulations that make it difficult to negotiate our way through the process," Minnery said. "When you think of a genuine grassroots effort by volunteers, (some rules) are a wet blanket in that process."

Minnery said there is pending federal litigation — the Independence Institute, Jon Caldara et al. vs. Bernie Buescher — challenging many aspects of state rules governing the initiative process. It could result in removing some of the worst thorns, Minnery said.

Minnery said one drawback in the process as it now stands is that anyone can file a civil lawsuit alleging fraud against ballot-petition circulators if any petition signers falsify information.

Colorado Springs-based Focus would consider another attempt at a ballot measure in the 2014 election cycle or look at a legislative push next year, Minnery said.

Yesterday the US Senate voted 51-48 to kill the Blunt Amendment to the transportation bill that would have given employers the right to deny insurance coverage for any treatment that they objected to for any reason, representing a major setback for Religious Right groups who urged passage of the extreme amendment.

Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink called the vote an affront to the First Amendment, although it is hard to see how anyone’s First Amendment right to free exercise of religion is being violated:

“Today the government, this time via Congress, again told Americans they must ‘conform or pay a price’ when it comes to their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion,” he said. “Americans are speaking out because they understand that they should not be forced to fight to protect what the Constitution already grants them under the First Amendment.”

The Obama Administration has issued an initial mandate that requires nearly all employers to purchase plans that cover all FDA-approved methods of birth control. NRLC has pointed out that the same authority could be employed by the Administration in the future to order virtually all health plans to cover all abortions. The focus now shifts to the House, where the same legislation, introduced as H.R. 1179 by Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-Ne.), currently has 220 cosponsors (more than half of all House members). In addition, numerous lawsuits have been filed by religiously affiliated employers, challenging the Obama mandate as a violation of constitutional rights and of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

"National Right to Life will continue to challenge the Obama Administration's abortion-expansionist agenda on Capitol Hill, and we will encourage millions of like-minded Americans to remember this issue when they cast their ballots in November," said Carol Tobias, National Right to Life president.

Eagle Forum president Phyllis Schlafly said that contraceptives “are not really medical care”:

"The contraceptive mandate is an introduction to the real ObamaCare, whereby a handful of leftists in D.C. impose the views of their big-money donors on more than 300 million Americans," said Schlafly. "If the Obama Administration's contraceptive mandate remains intact, then liberals will continue to demand that Americans pay for objectionable items and services that are not really medical care."

Tony Perkins of FRCAction warned that the Constitution has been “sacrificed”:

"Today, 51 senators, led by Sen. Harry Reid, sacrificed the Constitutional right of religious liberty on the altar of the Obama administration's radical big-government agenda. They turned a deaf ear to the very real religious and moral objections of millions of Americans and the First Amendment rights of all.

Concerned Women for America’s Penny Nance maintained that the mandate was part of a growing “oppressive federal bureaucracy”:

"Churches, religious organizations, and people of faith and conscience must have the right to choose their own health care and make their own moral decisions without having to submit to the one size fits all policies of President Obama and Secretary Sebelius' oppressive federal bureaucracy," Nance said.

The conspicuous absence of the two Mormon presidential candidates, Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, from Saturday’s Thanksgiving Family Forum was not lost on the Religious Right. Tom Minnery, head of Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink, one of the sponsors of the debate, speculated earlier this month that flare-up of the “Mormon issue” at the Values Voter Summit made Romney “hesitant to come back into an evangelical atmosphere like this.”

After the debate, American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer penned a pitiful column claiming that the “liberal media” is set to level any number of anti-Mormon attacks against Romney….and then helpfully spelled out exactly what those future attacks would be.

While Fischer is claiming that liberals will be the ones to attack Romney’s faith, in fact it was right-wing pastor Robert Jeffress who leveled the first prominent attack on Romney’s religion this year. Jeffress not only attacked Romney’s faith implicitly in his speech at the Values Voter Summit, but also on Fischer’s own show, where Fischer agreed with Jeffress that Romney is not a Christian.

Minnery himself, who lamented Romney’s non-appearance at the Thanksgiving forum, said in a 2009 interview with Iowa talk show host Steve Deace that Romney’s “faith is not a Christian faith”:

While Fischer enjoys thinly veiling his attacks on Romney’s faith by laying out the arguments the “liberal media” might make in the future, his American Family Radio colleague Alex McFarland is tackling the subject head-on. On his show Exploring the Word last month, McFarland devoted an entire segment to explaining how Mormons are not Christian, and that Mormonism is actually more like Islam:

The next Republican presidential debate – the Thanksgiving Family Forum – is tomorrow in the crucial early caucus state of Iowa. The elephant in the room will be the elephant not in the room – frontrunner Mitt Romney who is avoiding the event, presumably to prevent the “Mormon issue” from heating up again.

The Thanksgiving Family Forum is being sponsored by three right-wing organizations: Focus on the Family’s CitizenLink, the National Organization for Marriage, and the Family Leader, an Iowa-based Christian conservative organization. On the face of it, Romney fits in rather well with this crowd. He has called homosexuality “perverse” and “reprehensible” and has signed on to NOM’s pledge against equal rights for committed gay and lesbian couples. So far so good for Mitt, but there’s a theological snag.

Many Religious Right activists and organizers care first and foremost about supporting a “real” Christian. However, according to a recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute, “nearly half (49 percent) of white evangelical Protestant voters do not believe that the Mormon faith is a Christian religion.”

Romney desperately wants to avoid a repeat of the Values Voters Summit, where high profile Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress introduced Rick Perry and then claimed that Romney is not a "true, born again follower of Christ." The attack captured national headlines and greatly hindered Romney’s efforts to woo the Religious Right.

After Romney bowed out of tomorrow’s debate, which will feature all the other top GOP candidates, Family Leader founder Bob Vander Plaats went on Fox News to denounce the decision: “Mitt Romney has dissed this base in Iowa and this diss will not stay in Iowa[.]This might prove that he is not smart enough to be president.” Earlier Vander Plaats said that “should Romney decide to show up, there is no doubt that the hidden question on Mitt Romney has been his Mormon faith.”

Despite Romney’s deeply conservative social views, the “Mormon issue” will continue to haunt him, and no amount of pandering can overcome what appears to be a deep-seated theological objection. Look no further than Religious Right radio giant Focus on the Family.

Focus’ CitizenLink made headlines in late 2008 when it pulled an interview with Glenn Beck over his Mormon faith, as the Deseret Newsreported:

James Dobson's Focus on the Family ministry has pulled from its CitizenLink Web site an article about talk show host Glenn Beck's book "The Christmas Sweater" after some complained that Beck's LDS faith is a "cult" and "false religion" and shouldn't be promoted by a Christian ministry.

The controversy reportedly began when the group Underground Apologetics issued a press release on Christian Newswire attacking the Mormon faith:

While Glenn's social views are compatible with many Christian views, his beliefs in Mormonism are not. Clearly, Mormonism is a cult. The CitizenLink story does not mention Beck's Mormon faith, however, the story makes it look as if Beck is a Christian who believes in the essential doctrines of the faith.

We do recognize the deep theological difference between evangelical theology and Mormon theology, and it would have been prudent for us at least to have pointed out these differences. Because of the confusion, we have removed the interview from CitizenLink.

Earlier in 2008, Tom Minnery – CitizenLink’s executive director and an organizer of tomorrow’s debate – was quoted in Time saying that “Mitt Romney has acknowledged that Mormonism is not a Christian faith.” However, he acknowledged that “on the social issues we are so similar.”

Minnery appeared somewhat conciliatory on Wednesday, saying that “There is room for people who do not hold an orthodox Christianity, we prize Thomas Jefferson, but I don’t think anybody would say he was an orthodox Christian in his beliefs.” However, that begs the question of whether the Religious Right views Romney as a non-orthodox Christian or a non-Christian. Minnery himself seemed to answer that question four years ago.

As for Romney, he will continue to tout his social conservative credentials while doing his best to keep his religious views out of the limelight.

Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family’s political arm CitizenLink appeared on The Janet Mefferd Show yesterday to preview the Thanksgiving Family Forum, the “family discussion with the Republican Presidential Candidates” that CitizenLink is hosting in Iowa on Saturday along with The Family Leader and the National Organization for Marriage. Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Perry and Rick Santorum are all slated to appear at the forum moderated by Minnery and Republican pollster Frank Luntz.

Minnery told Mefferd that the moderators will ask questions about what a president will do if “we end up with a welter of different definitions [of marriage] in different states,” and what the candidates think about “the last words in that oath of office…‘so help me God.’” In fact, the oath does not include the words, “so help me God,” but the phrase has been used according to tradition.

We have decided that wouldn’t it be wonderful for at least one presidential debate to have the candidates respond to questions of the heart, questions of the soul. For example, I’ll just give you one of the questions we’ll be asking them: If you are elected president you will be taking the oath of office, the last words in that oath of office will be ‘so help me God,’ what will that mean to you? We’ll be asking them how much they believe that the institution of marriage as one man and one woman is important to the country and what will they do if we end up with a welter of different definitions in different states, is that the realm of action for a president to take or will he leave a bunch of different definitions around the country, he or she, so those are the kind of questions we’ll get at.

Later in the interview, Minnery said that there is even “room for people who do not hold an orthodox Christianity,” referring to the two candidates who are not attending the forum: Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, who both just so happen to be Mormons. He said that if Christians “prize Thomas Jefferson,” then it is possible that they can vote for a presidential candidate who is not a Christian but at least has a Christian “worldview.”

Just saying one is a Christian is not sufficient, one has to understand: what is your worldview? How do these moral and soul-matters play out in the policies that you will support when you are in the White House? There is room for people who do not hold an orthodox Christianity, we prize Thomas Jefferson, but I don’t think anybody would say he was an orthodox Christian in his beliefs. He did so much because he understood freedom, he understood the nature of a Creator and the blessings of a Creator as beneficial to the country, so people have to look beyond simply the response to the question, ‘is someone a Christian,’ because I would say, for one thing, I cannot remember an election cycle in which there were so many people trying to get the nomination for one party who professed to be Christians. So just saying you’re a Christian is not enough.

Next Saturday, most of the leading Republican presidential contenders will be gathering in Iowa for a "Thanksgiving Family Forum" that will be moderated by Republican pollster Frank Luntz. The event is being sponsored by The Family Leader, the National Organization for Marriage, and CitizenLink, the political arm of Focus on the Family.

Since CitizenLink is one of the co-sponsors, Executive Director Tom Minnery will be assisting Luntz in asking questions of the candidates and explains that the purpose of this forum is different from all of the debates that have been held so far:

We’re well into the presidential primary election debate season and I suspect that the candidates are as frustrated as those of us in the viewing audience, with “gotcha” questions, testy squabbles, and your-national-defense-strategy-in-30-seconds-please time limits.

Those of us in the social conservative realm have noticed something else-the virtual absence of intelligent and probing questions on the enduring values of faith, family, and society’s responsibilities to its children, both born and preborn. These are the messier and many times controversial issues that derive from the soul and for which sound bites simply won’t do.

In a recent CitizenLink video, Minnery explained that while Mitt Romney will reportedly not be attending, all of the others will, including Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, and Herman Cain.

Stuart Shepard: One of people who will be there has been in the headlines a lot over the past week and a half, and that is businessman Herman Cain. Are you going to hit him with tough questions about what has been in the headlines?

Minnery: Well, that itself is a tough question but I'm glad you asked it because, actually, no. Every person in every press outlet that I'm aware of wants to get to Herman Cain on these questions about sexual harassment from years ago and they're having ample opportunity to do that. There are issues that we want to know that don't happen to deal with that and we're not going to take up our time dealing with that issue because, as I say, everybody else is doing that. That's the one thing about Herman Cain that's in the press daily now.

So there you go: the Religious Right will be hosting the forum designed to find out where the Republicans candidates stand on issues regarding the "enduring values of faith [and] family," but they are "not going to take up our time" asking the frontrunner about the multiple allegations of sexual harassment he is facing.

Tom Minnery Posts Archive

Yesterday, Tom Minnery and Stuart Shepard of Focus on the Family's CitizenLink were discussing the need for conservative Christians to vote in the upcoming election, with Minnery saying that it was important so that Republicans can control both the House and the Senate and then pass right-wing legislation that President Obama will then veto, which will help the Republicans in the 2016 presidential election.
"It's always important to highlight the difference between conservatives and liberals," Minnery said. "The issue of marriage, the issue of sanctity of human life,... MORE >

Tom Minnery of CitizenLink says that Religious Right groups are urging people not to vote for Republican candidates who support marriage equality to send the GOP a message that "social conservatives are people who will not be taken for granted." Rush Limbaugh and Chuck Norris think that Eric Holder resigned in order to position himself for a Supreme Court nomination. The Foundation for Moral Law, started by Roy Moore, is joining the right-wing campaign to demand that Justices Elena Kagan and Ruth Bader Ginsburg recuse themselves from any case involving marriage equality... MORE >

Cindy Jacobs has issued an "Urgent Prophetic Warning" that is conveniently vague enough so that if anything does happen, she
can claim to have prophesied it. Of course, if nothing happens, she can then just claim that her prayers prevented it.
FRC prays against Obamacare once again: "Heavenly Father, we appeal to you,
Judge of the Universe. We know that your Eternal Law commands, "Thou shalt not kill." Please guide the thinking of
our Supreme Court Justices. Move them to do right and to reaffirm the religious liberty guaranteed by our Constitution. Stir... MORE >

As we’ve been reporting, the American Religious Right has found itself in a tough spot following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, since many Religious Right leaders have not only praised Putin’s anti-gay, anti-choice policies but are planning to attend a World Congress of Families summit at the Kremlin later this year.
Now, one such group that previously praised Putin has announced that it will pull out of the Moscow summit. Buzzfeed reported yesterday that Concerned Women for America will no longer be participating in the World Congress of Families... MORE >

Last week, we reported that National Organization for Marriage president Brian Brown had just gotten back from a Moscow planning meeting for the 2014 World Congress of Families gathering in Russia. Brown confirmed his participation to Rachel Maddow, telling her “we are proud to work with our allies in Russia and around the world to protect marriage as the union as one man and one woman.”
We now have a clearer idea of who those allies are. In a press release yesterday, the World Congress listed many of the participants in last week’s planning meeting. They included leaders... MORE >

It is amazing to see anti-gay activists keep attributing language found in Justice Scalia's DOMA dissent to Justice Kennedy's majority opinion. Does anyone care what Todd Starnes thought of last night's Video Music Awards? Of course not. But he wrote about it anyway. Wait, Trump University was a total scam? Who would have guessed. Robert Knight thinks that the movie "Lincoln" was "a clever way to justify the ruthlessly partisan enactment of Obamacare." In case you need them, here are "The Dos and Don'ts of Fashion as a... MORE >

Tom Minnery , head of Focus on the Family’s political arm CitizenLink, criticized Gov. Chris Christie for signing a bill barring the practice of ex-gay therapy on minors. He told Stuart Shepard that ex-gay therapy is “common and there is a history of them working well, many people have lost their confusion about sexuality as a result of them to the good.”
Minnery also feared the society is making kids think they are gay when they are not, increasing the need for the discredited pseudo-scientific practice: “As society prides itself on putting homosexuality on a pedestal... MORE >